Life's a Circus
by Mighty ANT
Summary: Five part oneshot featuring characters from the Madagascar trilogy. May or may not be continued. Open to prompts.


_** Romanza**_

_A/N: I may or may not continue these drabbles, depending on the response I get. I accept and welcome any and all theme suggestions, and hope that you will all review after reading!_

_Madagascar (c) DreamWorks SKG _

* * *

_ 01. Word of Mouth_

"Speak to me, baby! I cannot know what is being the matter without your words!"

"_Rawwrr_..."

"What's that?"

"_Roooo….rawr."_

Julien groaned theatrically, slapping a paw to his crownless head. "Why were you not _saying_ so? Of course I'll get it for ya, baby. Or I will be sending Maurice."

The lemur embraced his love's enormous head, and she growled to herself, lying across on her inflatable ball. "Okay, baby. I will tell dem," Julien concluded, burying his face in Sonya's thick fur.

"So?" Maurice sighed, resigned to his fate. "What does she want?"

"Can you not see that we are having a _moment!_?" Julien whined, voice muffled by the bear's fur. "The nerve of some people…" He came up for air a second later to send his right-hand man a withering look. "Fine. My love wants ten pounds of her fishy delicacies, since the New York Giants and freaky orange cat have been skimping out on her salmon, and those tasty little crab hors d'oeuvres we had in that old city. Chop chop!"

The aye-aye met his boss with a deadpanned look. "Did she really say all that?"

Julien sniffed. "You are just jealous that you don't speak bear!"

* * *

_02._ _On my Own_

In Alex's time at the zoo and across the country, he had never met another living creature who shared his passion for dance. He could leap and bound about the stage and through the savannah all he liked, and he was accepted, but there was no one to join him. Not until he found the circus. Not until he found _her. _

He could still remember the moment he first saw her; she'd been like a glowing angle, his saving grace—of course, she _had_ been their last chance for safety, to get onto the train and all that…. But at first glance she had been stunning. And she still was.

Gia swung across the practice trapeze set, a blur of spinning spots and delighted cries, leaping from bar to bar with elegant tumbles and gyrations. He dove past her, catching only a fleeting glance before he was whisked away by gravity and the next bar. Minutes of this torture passed before they landed on the platform in unison, and with a joyful shout Alex had Gia by the paw, twirling her around. She laughed along with him, the dwindling sunlight catching in her eyes, and he felt something within him snap into place.

"You know, I think I'm in love with you," Alex grinned, uncaring of the consequences.

Gia blinked once, but she soon bore a gleeful expression that matched his. "Ditto," she beamed.

* * *

_03._ _Sickness_

She just had to get sick the day before their performance, Gloria reflected sourly, sneezing loudly. She groaned, wrapping her blankets tightly around herself and picking up the bottle of medicine that the penguins had been kind enough to filch for her. It would taste horribly, she knew.

Gloria coughed, her body racked by her sickness, and this was encouragement enough to take the medicine. The hippo shuddered as the liquid went down her throat, closing her eyes in an attempt to get some sleep.

"Knock, knock?" a familiar voice began tentatively from the other side of the divider, and Gloria actually smiled.

"Come on in, Melman," she called nasally.

There was a pause before the gangly giraffe poked his head in, balking slightly at her ill state but managed to come all the way inside. She took a moment to smile at his bravery before noticing the items he held in his hooves.

"Sorry I didn't come sooner," Melman apologized, his brow slightly furrowed, walking over and placing the vase of white orchids on the table beside her, overshadowing the bottles of medicine, and then holding out the plate of toasted wheat bread with butter on both sides. He grinned in that awkward way of his that Gloria found contagious despite her miserable state. "I needed to find orchids and wheat toast for my girl."

Gloria accepted the toast with a grin, her sickness suddenly feeling very inconsequential. "Well thank you, Dr. Mankiewicz."

* * *

_04._ _Advice_

"So…Vitaly…you used to be married, right?"

The tiger paused, lowering his arm with knife still in hand to stare at the shorter feline beside him. Alex appeared oblivious to Vitaly's glower, instead focusing on the dagger in his paw, one eye closed and tongue sticking out he was quite a sight as he tried to get the perfect aim on the drawn outline of himself on the circular target at the end of the room.

Vitaly snorted, resuming his knife throwing. "And where were you hearing that, lion?"

Alex shrugged absently, releasing his knife. It hit the outline of himself mid-calf. "Stefano might have mentioned it."

"Curse the sea lion," Vitaly growled, letting his own dagger loose—it pierced the wood square in the center of the Alex-outline's head with a loud _thwack_. The lion gulped, picking up a kunai from the wall of arsenals behind him. Vitaly set his critical gaze on him again. "Then why are you asking questions you already know answer too?"

Alex rolled his shoulders with a twinge of discomfort, letting the kunai go as well, but throwing with more force. It punctured the very outer rims of the target. Vitaly smirked at the younger feline's unease.

"Is there someone you are tinking of asking marriage question?" he inquired innocently, but came off sounding threatening anyway.

The lion took a step back as Vitaly released an ax, the sharp edge hitting the target spot-on once again, this time piercing the Alex-outline's abdominal area with an even louder _thwack. _The real Alex gulped.

"Would it be a problem if there was?" the lion asked carefully. "I mean someone I was going…going to ask."

"_Da_."

Another weapon was thrown, courtesy of Vitaly, this one a butcher knife. It didn't miss its mark, and the sound of metal impaling wood bounced off of the train car walls.

_Thwack. _

Alex gulped as the tiger picked up four more daggers, each bigger than the last. "Well…uh...what if..?"

_Thwack. _

"Conversation is over. We speak of this never again."

_Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. _

Alex swallowed again, louder than before. "R-right."

* * *

_05. __New_

"All right, I need names and life stories before we get this show started!" Marty announced, and the three circus horses around him paused in their preparation of their performance, exchanging glances before beaming.

"Ah, _s__í_, _s__í_, _Se__ñ__or_ Marty!" the mare with pink butterfly wings and makeup exclaimed happily. "Is only proper." Her sisters nodded in agreement before she introduced herself, "My name eez Ernestina."

The mare in the mauve butterfly wings shook out her curled mane, giggling as she applied matching eye shadow. "Esperanza!" she replied.

Marty turned to the last of the triplets, the mare in jade, who was the one applying the zebra's makeup. She laughed lightly. "I am Esmeralda."

He nodded, going over the names in his head. "Okay, Ernestina, Esperanza, and Esmeralda," he said, pointing toward each circus horse in turn, before grinning, "Well, now I get how Alex felt when he couldn't tell me apart from all those other zebras. Anyway, life stories?"

Ernestina giggled, brushing out her mane. "We do not have _mucho tiempo_ for storytelling, _Se__ñ__or_ Marty, but is okay." She nodded to Esmeralda, and the jade-themed mare smiled up at Marty, putting the finishing touches on his paint.

"We come from a horse show in Granada. We were the stars until it closed down, but old ringmaster bought us before we could be sold separately," Esmeralda said, finishing the zebra's dark green paintjob, "and there, all done!"

Marty took a few steps back to look himself over in the mirror, grinning at what he saw. "My, my, you have outdone yourselves, ladies!"

"Esmeralda did most of dee work," Esperanza shrugged.

The zebra trained his winning smile on the jade-themed mare. "True that."

Ernestina giggled. "You are such a flirt, _Se__ñ__or_ Marty! The show is about to start!"

"Took the words right outta my mouth."

Marty let out a yelp as he was dragged out of the dressing room by Alex, the lion waving back to the mares. "Show starts in five, ladies!"

"Avenge me, girls!" Marty cried in jest, trying to wriggle his way out of his friend's right hold. "The maniac's gonna do me in! Avenge me!"

The mares only laughed, waving goodbye.


End file.
